'Wounded Veteran Snowman' stands as a tribute in Springettsbury Twp.

YORK, PA -- Nate Fornwalt began working on the snowman at about 11 p.m. Wednesday.

It was slow going. There wasn't much snow to speak of, just a thin blanket on the small front yard of his rented house on Memory Lane in Springettsbury Township, barely an inch.

He worked for hours, rolling the heavy wet snow into two large balls for the snowman's body, the bottom one weighing about 450 pounds, the top one, 300 or more. He couldn't lift the top ball so he had to pull his pickup truck into the yard, standing on the tailgate and using heavy anchor line to leverage it into position.

He used a skull, a Halloween decoration, for the snowman's head, topping it with his Marine Corps boonie cover. Dreadlocks, fashioned from black, knit potholders and decorated with beads, flowed from under the hat. The snowman was holding an American flag with its right arm. Its left arm was saluting. ("I know, wrong arm," Fornwalt said.)

On the snowman's shoulders were a set of staff sergeant chevrons. Hanging around its neck was a dog tag that belonged to Fornwalt's buddy, Doc White, a Navy corpsman who didn't make it home.

On the snowman's chest was Fornwalt's Purple Heart emblem. He gave his two Purple Hearts to his 5-year-old son, Zayne.

The snowman is also spattered with red paint, fake blood, symbolizing the blood he, and others, had shed in defense of their country, blood from his wounds that left his body, and mind, scarred, and have forced him, at 33, to face his own mortality.

"Whenever it snows, I always make a snowman," he said. "I wanted to do something different, something that honors veterans."

The snowman's name is Billy B.A. - B.A. standing for Badass.

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Fornwalt joined the Marines in 1997.

Former Marine Nathan Fornwalt poses with his 'Wounded Veteran Snowman,' which he created in the front yard of his Springettbury Townhip home after Wednesday evening's snow. Fornwalt placed some of his own medals on the creation in the hopes to entertain people and hope they appreciate what the military does. (YORK DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS--JASON PLOTKIN)

He saw his first action, as a gunner, in 1999 in Kosovo with the 2nd Battalion of the Sixth Marines. His unit's job was to push the Serbs out of Bosnia.

"It was war, serious war," he said. "That really opened my eyes to what this was all about."

In 2003, he was deployed to Camp Anaconda in Iraq, part of the first push of the war. "That was a very sobering experience," he said. "At the end of it, you look around and half the guys you started with were gone."

He was wounded for the first time on that deployment, in Ramadi. A bullet passed through his right forearm and lodged in his left bicep. "I had no idea I was hit," he said. "I almost bled out."

He was deployed again in 2005, this time to Afghanistan, serving a year doing reconnaissance. That deployment ended when a Chinese mortar deposited a dozen pieces of shrapnel in his right hip. "Almost ripped my pants clean off," he recalled.

He returned to Iraq in 2008, a member of the Marines Special Operations Command, part of a unit that provided security to the brass. He was accompanying a general on a tour of Fallujah when he was wounded the third time, this time from mortar fire. The shrapnel tore up his face and right ear, and, unbeknownst to him at the time, damaged his brain and crushed his pituitary gland.

The symptoms didn't show up immediately. He lost a lot of weight. He started losing teeth. He was having trouble remembering things. He got crippling headaches.

Medals are placed on the chest of the snowman created by former Marine Nathan Fornwalt. ( YORK DAILY RECORD/SUNDAY NEWS--JASON PLOTKIN)

He retired from the Corps last May and moved to York to be close to a girlfriend; he's originally from Shanksville, in western Pennsylvania, the site where Flight 93 went down on 9/11.

"It was a good ride while it lasted," he said, "I'd do it all over again."

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He receives treatment from the Veterans Administration. He has to have hormone shots every five to 10 days to make up for his damaged pituitary. He has degeneration of his bones. It has hit his spine.

He is 100 percent disabled, unable to work. He suffers from PTSD. He has nightmares and suffers from depression, agoraphobia and panic attacks. His memory is bad. "My whole childhood is gone," he said.

The doctors told him he won't live to see his son graduate high school.

He looks well, though he does walk kind of stiffly, mostly because of his back. He is about 6-feet tall and has muscular arms, decorated with tattoos. On his right forearm is "The Answer" in script. "The Answer is the fight," he said. "From the day you're born, you fight. You fight for your first breath. You fight in school to get good grades. You fight."

And you fight until your last breath.

His son's name is tattooed over his heart.

He stays around his island now. He calls his home that because it is snuggled into a small plot between the Eastern Market House and a bank branch in a commercial area on Memory Lane.

He stays home mostly, filling his time with gardening and raising rare orchids. He got into gardening when he was recovering from injuries at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

And when it snows, he builds snowmen.

"Being an adult, we forget we were kids at one point," he said. "I try to keep in touch with that child, that 13-year-old boy inside."